Hostilities Break Out
Synopsis The Earth Team arrives on Alwas for the Pre-Selections. The race championships are about to begin, and Molly is impressed by Prince Aikka, a rival pilot. When the Earth Team's turn comes up, Molly senses that Rick and Jordan are in danger. Full Recap The Avatar's ship arrives at Alwas, one of the aforementioned qualifying planets for the grand finals on Ōban. Don Wei is the first member of the Earth Team to wake up after an undetermined amount of time spent traveling, and orders everybody to get up and ready to leave the ship. After a moment, he picks up the flashlight that woke him up in order to look for any potential damage to their star-racers. Going up to the flatbed to inspect them more closely, he finds Eva sleeping on the tarp. Woken up from the flashlight, she apologizes to Don realizing she fell asleep. Not expecting Eva's presence, he demands to know why she's in the Avatar's ship. Unsure of an answer, Eva responds to Don that she's his daughter, but is interrupted right before saying that by Jordan, who is also disgruntled by her presence. Understanding that there are other people around, Eva gets back into the persona of Molly, and tells Don that she believed the Earth Team could use another mechanic. Don, disapproving of this answer, states to her that Stan and Koji are the best mechanics of the league, and labels her as just a surprise. A moment later, the Avatar's ship opens up, and they exit with their truck. Outside, the Earth Team is quickly greeted by Satis, one of the Avatar's servants. He escorts them to their assigned pit but warns them that they don't have much time before they're scheduled to race after the opening ceremony concludes. Heeding his statement, the Earth Team immediately begins running diagnostics on the Whizzing Arrow. After testing the engines, Stan and Koji discover a leak that lead to the loss of approximately a liter of engine fluid. Wanting to be useful, Eva drives off on her rocket seat to get the fluid needed. Watching her leave the pit with Don, Rick jokingly asks if he brought a substitute pilot. However, Don responds telling him that he should know about his negative opinions on female pilots and goes back inside, not caring that Eva heard him. Rick, now not talking to anyone, comments to himself that she seems fairly talented after she narrowly avoided getting run over by a large star-racer that quickly came out of a blind spot. After acquiring a liter of engine fluid, Eva returns to the pit, only to find herself locked out. After she bangs on the door, a scrub inside appearing to inspect the Whizzing Arrow is startled by her and runs off. Upset believing she is being deliberately locked out, she decides to go to the opening ceremony. There, she meets a young prince named Aikka and his supervisor, Canaan. After being spotted and called over by Jordan, she enthusiastically gives the engine fluid to Stan. Almost immediately after, the race judges arrive to their balcony, and announce the official commencement of the Alwas pre-selections, and then summon the Avatar. The Avatar briefs the contestants of the guidelines and only rule (Do not murder your adversary). He then wishes luck for all contestants, then disappears. The race judges wait no time to begin the race, calling forth the first pair of contestants to the starting area: Prince Aikka of Nourasia (Riding G'dar, a giant beetle) and an unnamed contestant from Hortlum. While speaking with Eva, Jordan reveals that the kingdom of Nourasia has a public alliance with the Crog Imperium, and thus has a low opinion of them. However, much to his dismay, Aikka wins halfway through after firing an arrow into the Hortlum racer's exhaust, completely destroying their star-racer. Later in the evening, the Earth Team is called to race. Rick is matched against Grooor, who pilots Apocalypse. While watching the race, Eva sees visions of a violent star-racer crash when Rick is rammed into the track's walls by Grooor. Unsure what she just saw, Eva assumes the vision is a gut feeling that something bad is going to happen. Anxious, she rushes to the control room to warn Stan and Koji about her premonitions of something bad happening to the Arrow and Rick. After Grooor loses his lead and control due to tripping on a horizontal pillar, Koji reassures Eva that nothing bad is going to happen and suggests she goes back outside to watch the race. While in the canyon, Grooor runs out of ammunition and begins to focus on passing Rick instead of shooting down the Arrow. Rick slightly understeers into the final turn and is rammed slightly off course by Grooor, who didn't turn in time and was even further off track. While on the beach straight, the Arrow's right cooling system experiences a dangerous and unexpected surge of heat, panicking Stan and Koji. The Arrow's right air brake flies open and its accompanying engine shuts down, then suddenly explodes. Apocalypse is caught in the explosion, and both crash at the track's starting area in flames. Eva, who had started watching the race again outside on the roof just before the cooling system failed, experiences the same vision of a star-racer crash again, now in greater detail. Realizing that it was a memory from when she was a small child, in tandem with seeing Rick's crash, Eva falls to her knees in anguish. Don rushes to the crash site to assess the damage. Jordan gets out of the Arrow unharmed, announcing this to him. Panicked over Rick, Don rushes to him reassuring him that he'll get out fine. Rick replies in overall agreeance, but passes out after declaring that he didn't come to Always just to lose after a single race. The episode then closes with a close-up shot of Eva horrifically observing the crash site from the roof. Gallery Snapshot dvd 00.19 -2011.11.01 21.48.37-.jpg Snapshot dvd 00.14 -2011.11.01 21.47.17-.jpg Snapshot dvd 00.10 -2011.11.01 21.46.08-.jpg Snapshot dvd 00.06 -2011.10.31 13.04.25-.jpg Snapshot dvd 00.09 -2011.10.31 13.04.52-.jpg Snapshot dvd 00.20 -2011.11.01 21.48.56-.jpg Trivia *'Original French Title': Les hostilités commencent *'Original French Air Date': April 12, 2006 *'ABC Family Air Date': June 5, 2006 *'Japanese Title': 戦闘開始 (Sentō kaishi, Beginning of Combat) *Prince Aikka and Grooor make their debuts in this episode. *The star-racer that almost runs Molly over in the Pit Area is the Stone Crusher. *During the Avatar's speech, several future pilots make cameos in the crowd; Flint and Marcel, Ceres, Rush and Toros. *This episode was included with A Fresh Start in a one hour special during its premiere. Category:Episodes Category:Alwas Cycle